Empowering Enterprise: Small Businesses Should Invest in Chatbot Technology Now

According to a recent Research and Markets study, the global chatbots market is projected to witness a compound annual growth rate of 32.78 per cent by 2023, reaching a total market size of US$895.27 million from US$163.34 million in 2017.

In 2018, many smaller organisations will start using chatbots to offload transactional requests to improve the overall customer experience and operational efficiencies.

For SMBs (small and medium businesses) in particular, a common thought is that chatbots require an army of expensive developers which they can’t afford.

But does that mean small businesses shouldn’t invest in this technology, or on the contrary, do they risk failure by being too cautious?

No, and definitely yes.

Instead of completely replacing the need to hire an expert by substituting it with AI, business owners need to think about how they can optimise 70 to 80 per cent of the workload for some of their front-line employees by using transactional chatbots.

“Empowering Enterprise” is an ongoing Ingram Micro series published in every Wednesday’s edition of The Business Times. It aims to provide news and thought leadership on the latest developments in cloud and security.